MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR SATURDAY JULY 18

The 2015 Annual Chelsea Garden Club Pit Tour will be on Saturday, July 18. Let's meet at 9:30 AM at 23rd Street and 7th Avenue in front of the Papaya hot dog shop.

Or sleep in and you can meet us at 10 AM at 23rd Street and 8th Avenue in front of  Dallas Barbecue.

    We'll mosey up Eighth Avenue to 30th Street and then cut over to Ninth Avenue and make our way South down to about 17th Street and then loop back to Eighth and head back North finishing at 23rd. So if you want to join in at any point, just look for a large group of people staring at one of the avenue tree pits.

Flower power!

One of our gardeners sent us this:

Garden Dialogues:

In June, get exclusive access to private gardens in New York City, The Hamptons, and Westchester, and hear directly from the designers and their clients about their collaborative process. Garden Dialogues provides unique opportunities for small groups to visit some of today’s most beautiful gardens created by some of the most accomplished designers currently in practice.

It's $45 for a garden tour and it starts this Saturday, June 20 at 10am with a tour of a Midtown Sky Garden in Manhattan. The award-winning, 6,500 square-foot terrace of the Midtown Manhattan Sky Garden takes advantage of panoramic skyline views while providing an intimate garden backdrop to the mid-century-modern building’s newly-renovated interior workspace. Richly textured and seasonally diverse plantings include a dense blanket of drought-tolerant prairie grasses, wildflower perennials, and spring flowering bulbs, punctuated by flowering Crab Apple trees. 

Our own gardener, Michael at 20th St and Ninth Ave. is hosting a tour of the Bakwin Estate in Ossining on Saturday June 20, 1:30 to 3:30pm | Ossining

M. Bakwin Estate
Michael V. Ruggiero, RLA of MVR Landscape Garden

Nestled among an impressive array of large rock outcrops, this Tudor-style home and garden offers panoramic views of its central ten-acre groomed landscape. From the house and terraces, visitors enjoy a vista of towering trees, spacious lawn areas, dramatic rock outcroppings, lush gardens brimming with seasonal color, a three-acre pond, orchards, and meadows. An 'integrated' deer fence protects such gardens as the vegetable garden, a Japanese style garden, and a perennial border. Forty acres of mature, deciduous forest completely enclose the property. A dense, planted understory and years of moss overgrowth carpet the forest floor and exposed rock, revealing the interplay between the designed and natural and celebrating the rugged vernacular New York landscape.  

Go to tclf.org/ for more information about tours and tickets.

Last weekend's Spring Meeting had a terrific turnout and great discussions. Many of the gardeners stayed until the end--two and a half hours! Thanks to everyone who makes this such a nice group. Three reminders:
1) May 16th the Lower East Side Ecology Center is coming in the morning to mulch the Ninth Avenue pits. If you can, please help them. (I will be out of town so it would help if others could step in.)
Chelsea Garden Club Street Tree Care Event

Date: Saturday, May 16^th

Time: 9AM-12PM 

Start Location: Southeast corner of 9^th Avenue and West 30^th Street

Text:

New York City’s street trees provide a lot of things to New Yorkers: cleaner air, shade, green beauty, and much more.  Let’s make sure they stay nice and strong by providing them with a bit of TLC.  Come and get your hands dirty with the NYC Compost Project hosted by the Lower East Side Ecology Center at another wonderful street tree care event with the Chelsea Garden Club!  The day will include clearing the street pits of garbage, raking up the soil that has been compacted over the winter months, and applying fresh DSNY Compost Mix. 

Some things to keep in mind:

- Be prepared to work in any type of weather

- Wear sturdy footwear that is comfortable

- Bring a water bottle

To RSVP to this event, send an e-mail to ariana@lesecologycenter.orgincluding how many people you plan on coming with.  Please RSVP byMay 14th.  

2) Saturday, July 18 we will have our Pit Tour so mark your calendar.

3) At the meeting,  I mentioned how important milkweed is to the monarch butterflies (they are having a hard time) so please try to include some in your pit. Here is some info on the types to grow:

http://www.nwf.org/pollinators/monarch/milkweed-resources.aspx

Three species have particularly wide ranges and are good choices in most regions: common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca), swamp milkweed (A. incarnata), and butterflyweed (A. tuberosa). The latter two are highly ornamental and widely available via the nursery trade.